How in the Tech

Changing the Mouse Click Behavior in Firefox’s Address Bar

By Adam Myers ⋅ January 28, 2009 ⋅ Tags: Firefox

Everyone is a usability expert it seems. It seems more and more that as software matures, layouts and organization of tools and components are switched around just for the sake of change. Sure the developers state it’s after hours of research and usability testing that leads to the switcher-roo but I’m not sure I buy it. Look at the Control Panel in Windows Vista. Can you honestly find anything without having to use the search box? I doubt it. Even if you adjusted to the newer Control Panel view when you upgraded to XP many years ago – away from the classic view that showed all the icons – Vista erases all of that and forces you to relearn the location of things like Device Manager or Screensaver. Without continuing this rant any further, I will say that Firefox 3 changed the mouse click behavior in the address bar as compared version 2.0.

Previously, if you did a single left-click in the address bar of Firefox 2 the cursor would jump to that location of the URL. This allowed you to correct typos or quickly modify just a portion of the address. If you wanted to select the entire URL you simply double-clicked. While I’m sure there is a logical reason behind this, Firefox 3 behaves in the exact opposite manner! A single left-click selects the entire URL while a double left-click selects a word in the URL. I know this is a minor thing to quibble about but my point stands, why change it?

Here is how to change it back in Firefox 3, mostly.

1. In a new Firefox window/tab, type about:config in the address bar.



2. From the Filter box, type browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll. This parameter controls the left-click behavior in the Firefox address bar. Set the value to False to disable the full URL selection.



3. Again, from the Filter box, type browser.urlbar.doubleClickSelectsAll. This parameter controls the middle-click behavior. We are going to reassign it the functionality of the original left-click. Changing the value to True will result in a middle-click selecting the entire URL.